


Echo

by Elisexyz



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13787967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Kara smiles placidly. “Dr Whitehall asked me to come,” she explains. Grant immediately wonders what this Whitehall wants with him. He’s never met him, he just knows him by name, as the guy in charge of the— “I was happy to comply,” Kara adds, and Grant’s stomach sinks.





	Echo

**Author's Note:**

> I know I am like. the only one. but I love these two. So here's an AU in which they were a ~thing before the uprising. You can find me on Tumblr as [heytheredeann](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com).

His life in-between Skye’s visits can only be described as _boring_. His cell doesn’t offer any form of entertainment whatsoever, the agents tasked with bringing him food barely make eye-contact with him, let alone _conversate_ , and the only thing that’s left to keep busy is thinking and training.

He needs to stay in shape, just in case his team grows desperate enough to ask for his help on something or he somehow manages to orchestrate an escape. You never know.

Also, really, what else can he occupy himself with?

Skye doesn’t come all that often. He thinks it’s foolish of them not to get every single piece of intel they can out of him – or at least _try_ – just because they are angry. Using him as a last resort, strategically, is a bad move, taking into account that they are investing into keeping him alive in their basement.

Since Skye has come by the day before, asking about information on a Hydra base that Grant had unfortunately never visited – not that he wasn’t able to sell what little he knew, anyway –, Grant isn’t expecting to see her anytime soon. Which is why when the veil comes down outside of meal hours – he has a pretty decent biological clock –, he’s beyond surprised.

He masters up his most benevolent smile, feeling a tingle of worry as he wonders if something went wrong, considering that she’s already back, and— he finds Kara standing in front of him, a slight smile on her face.

Grant has to choke back a noise of surprise at that.

“Kara?” he calls, as soon as he can trust his voice to come out steady. “What are you doing here?”

One of the things that he’s had the time to regret while being down there is not having been able to say goodbye to her. They shared a phone call, in the midst of the uprising, just to make sure that they both were okay – Grant talked to her hearing John’s teasing scoffs behind him, as he pledged loyalty to SHIELD’s cause while working with the enemy – but he heard nothing more from her, after. Coulson surely didn’t grant him a phone call after he was captured.

Given his strategic silence, Grant couldn’t even _ask_ Coulson directly. But with Skye, he thought it wouldn’t hurt. He guessed that showing her that he cares could only do good for his image, and that maybe she’d be compassionate enough to give him an answer. That answer came the next time they saw each other, in the form of accusation, because Kara was unaccounted for, most likely captured or killed by Hydra, and he had been a part of that – “Do you feel bad?” she hissed. “Or was she just part of the game too?”

The thought wouldn’t leave him alone. Not knowing risked driving him crazy. It took him a long while to manage to compartmentalize it a bit, to not have the thought pester him day and night. He forced himself to decide that there was nothing he could do about it anyway, not as long as he was in that cell. If he ever got out, he’d look for her. For now, he could only hope that she got a quick death, or that she decided to turn – as _if;_ he knows she would never.

It worked, most of the time. Sometimes, it didn’t.

But now she’s standing right in front of him, and she looks blissfully _unharmed_.

“I’ve come to get you out, of course,” she states, her smile widening. It takes him a few more seconds to snap out of his amazement and notice that there’s something _off_ about her expression: it’s just too carefree, too light considering that she’s in the midst of freeing an enemy of SHIELD. She shouldn’t be looking so _serene_ , like she’s fulfilling her life’s purpose.

She should at the very least give him an earful about lying to her. Even if she loves him, even if she’s actually here to free him, she’s supposed to be angry at his deceit. She never liked being lied to.

He doesn’t have time to reply, because the barrier comes down and Kara keeps staring at him, smiling peacefully. “Hail Hydra,” she adds.

It sounds wrong coming out of her mouth. Honestly, he’s never been a fan of the organization itself to begin with, but hearing Kara say it is— he never thought she’d turn. He knows they have their ways, but she’s strong and loyal, he’s always been pretty convinced that she would die before betraying herself. The possibility that they managed to _break_ her regardless stings, and a lot.

“You turned? That why you are here?” he asks, quietly. He takes a step forward, his hands itching to touch her, bring her close so that he can make up for all that time that they spent apart, for all the worry that overcame him when he couldn’t run to her as everything came crushing down – the possibility that Hydra would come out of the shadows always sounded so foreign to him; he rarely stopped to consider what it’d feel like to not have her near as it happened –, but he stops himself, unable to ignore all the alarms going off in his head, screaming that something just isn’t _right_.

Kara smiles placidly. “Dr Whitehall asked me to come,” she explains. Grant immediately wonders what this Whitehall wants with him. He’s never met him, he just knows him by name, as the guy in charge of the— “I was happy to comply,” Kara adds, and Grant’s stomach sinks.

“I’m— glad,” he chokes out, trying to revise in his mind whatever he knows about the Faustus program, which unfortunately isn’t _much_ , calculating how risky it’d be to just follow her in comparison to knocking her out and offering Coulson an olive branch – assuming Kara didn’t slaughter them all to get to him, that is – and work together to dismantle Whitehall’s operation— he’s quick to realize that the second option is most likely going to end with both him and Kara in chains.

“Let’s go to him then, shall we?” Grant finally offers, a quick smile on his face. Kara nods happily, offering him a gun and preceding him towards the exit.

Grant doesn’t recall anything about the brainwashing program erasing previous emotional attachments, but he does know that it’s based on making the master the centre of the victim’s world. He knows that Kara would shoot him with no hesitation, if only Whitehall asked.

He’s going to _fix_ this. And even if discovering how he can help will probably mean having to delay the slow and painful death he has in mind for Whitehall, he’ll endure it. He needs to get her back, and then they can figure it all out.


End file.
